


Larceny, and Other Loki-Friendly Words

by MElizabethPenn



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (2011)
Genre: Angst, Drabbles, F/M, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-19
Updated: 2012-08-18
Packaged: 2017-10-29 19:02:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/323111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MElizabethPenn/pseuds/MElizabethPenn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of random non-related drabbles and ficlets concerning possible interactions between one god of mischief and the queen of tasers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Thaw

**Author's Note:**

> Don't own; don't sue, si'l vous plait.

“You mean, you’re willing to place your life into my hands?” He was definitely looking at her with confusion now. Frustrated with herself, she looked down.

“Dude, I trust you.” She paused before adding half under her breath, “Despite my better judgment, I might add.” She flicked her eyes back up to meet his, just in time to see the surprise dawning on his face. It flickered there for a moment before he mastered his expression once more, but not before Darcy saw the barely perceptible thawing in his eyes. In a show of feigned indifference, to allow him to save face, she gave his hand a hearty pat, saying a touch too loudly, “It’ll probably come back around to bite me in the ass…”

He gave a brusque nod, the slightly bitter expression back on his face again. Something in her heart cracked at the sight of it.


	2. Identity

She helped him find his identity once more, when he had lost all hope of recovering it ever again. He had been drifting (in more ways than one), and she grounded him. Albeit, _after_ he was physically grounded, the process of which he would not recommend to anyone. Travelling between worlds without the help of the Bifrost tended to end in broken bones, particularly when one has fallen through a wormhole. But she picked up the pieces and put them back together again. And this configuration made sense.

Before, when on the bridge and locked in combat with Thor, he had been teetering on the brink of madness and despair and megalomania. That being had been shattered into utter ruin with his rather unorthodox descent into Midgard. With any luck, that form of him wouldn’t be making a reappearance anytime soon. But then, he wasn’t exactly on the best terms with luck, was he?

She had found him in the desert, bloodied and broken. He saw her blurrily through a haze of pain as she bent over him assessing his injuries. For a moment, his vision cleared as he locked eyes with her, and he saw sympathy as well as… fear. For him? **_Of_** him? He wasn’t sure, but at that moment the agents from S.H.I.E.L.D. arrived, and when they moved him the sheer agony caused his jaw to clench and his eyes to roll back in his head as blackness descended and oblivion overtook him.


	3. In Which Loki Gets Tased...

“Egad, woman! I do not intend to harm you!”  
That’s when the heel of her boot connects with his instep, causing him to loosen his grip on her. Big mistake. She uses the opportunity to slip down through his arms encircling her, giving him an elbow to the groin on her way down (which doesn’t faze him that much anyway). It’s the fact that it distracts him long enough for her to tase him that is his downfall. Erik and Jane can do nothing except stand by with mouths agape in shock, as Darcy lays the god of mischief out flat.


	4. Vivisection

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little bit of a longer one. This one came to me while I was walking home from the library, and part of me just wanted to ignore it and not write it down. But the rabid plot bunny would not let go... So here it is in all its angsty glory. XD

He has to make her believe him. He cannot afford for her not to. She will be on the wrong side in this battle if she remains at his side. In another world and another time, this blossoming… _something_ probably would have become much more. She has the capacity to heal and piece together so much within him that he had thought was beyond repair. But he is a complete and utter fool if he believes for one second that her staying with him will end in anything but her being injured, or worse, killed. He **will not** allow that to be added to the things that still weigh on his conscience. Not if he can help it.

So he rips her heart to shreds, word by agonizing word. He tells her she was nothing but an amusing pet, to be discarded at will. He tells her he’s never cared about her. That she is nothing. The words tear out of him with wrenching pain, stained with his own lifeblood, and he sees the agony as they hit home like poisoned darts, piercing her to the marrow. He cannot look her in the eye, because then she’ll see the part of him that is screaming, is desperate to tell her, “Don’t believe it! It’s not true!”

After he has finished his verbal vivisection of her heart, he sees her swallow hard as she struggles to keep her emotions in check. The only outward sign of her pain is the wetness currently making its way down her face, from eyes brimming over. He meets her eyes for just a split second, and he regrets it instantly, because he knows the look she gives him will haunt him for the rest of his life (however long that may be). Then she takes one small step forward and places a hand on his chest. Years of deception allows him to remain with his features schooled into a mask of indifference, but he fears his wildly beating heart may betray him.

She raises herself up on her toes in front of him, and he sees what she intends to do and turns his face away, eyes squeezed shut, so that her kiss lands somewhere in the region of his jawline. He knows if he allows her that one kiss where it was intended, all of his defences will crumble away, and he knows exactly where _that_ will lead. There is a puff of breath that stirs his hair, as she sighs softly, then the pressure of her hand disappears and she is gone.


	5. Incognito

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was a royal PAIN to write. I've been wrestling with it for the past month, at least.

She didn’t know where the black cat came from. He just showed up on her doorstep during a rainstorm, doing a pretty decent impression of a drowned rat and yowling pitifully. Jane had tried to keep her from bringing him into the apartment, but had finally caved after a couple hours of yowling. So Darcy had brought him in, wrapped in a towel. Once he was dried off, she dug a can of tuna out of the depths of the cupboard (and hoped to god it hadn’t gone bad or something) and put it in one of the cereal bowls and placed it on the floor. The cat inhaled the food as if he was never going to eat again, and then stalked over to the corner and stayed there the rest of the evening performing his post-meal toilette and avoiding her. It wasn’t until much later during the night that she woke up to a furry body snuggled up to her side. She supposed that would do for a thank you.  
  
                                                                                         ***

Darcy was woken from a sound sleep by something heavy falling on her. She sat up with a start, displacing the Cat who had jumped from the chest of drawers right on top of her.  He now sat on the floor, glaring balefully and blinking at her in that slow lazy way of his. Darcy glanced at the clock. It was about fifteen minutes until the time she usually fed him. Of course. There is no snooze button on a cat who wants breakfast. Well, he was just going to have to wait, because she still intended to sleep for at least 15 more minutes. About five minutes later, she was once again woken up, this time because the dratted cat was now chewing on her toes.

“Fine! Fine! I’ll freaking feed you!” she exclaimed as she threw back the covers and stomped all the way to the kitchen. If she hadn’t known better, she would have sworn the Cat was smirking at her as she opened his can of tuna.  
  
                                                                                         ***

Darcy had had a pretty crap day. It had started out with the coffeemaker breaking, and the lack of caffeine meant that she and Jane fought on the way to work which escalated to them not speaking to each other. Then, at work it was nothing but boring paperwork and boring lectures from Director Fury.  Then she got in a shouting match with Clint Barton over some offhand remark about her informal clothing, which led to Director Fury instating a dress-code. So on top of everything, Darcy had the rest of the S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel glaring daggers into her back the rest of the day. When they got home, Jane and Darcy still weren’t talking, and Jane went straight to her room and shut the door without so much as a how-do-you-do.

Darcy flopped down on the couch, tears already stinging her eyes and her throat tight. A meow called her attention to the floor at her feet. Through the blur of her tears she saw the Cat sitting with his tail curled around his feet and looking up at her solemnly. At that she truly did burst into tears, and she felt the couch next to her dip as he jumped up next to her. He butted her arm with his head, and she blindly reached out one hand to scratch behind his ears as she swiped at her streaming eyes with the other. After a bit, a thunderous purr erupted from his throat, which calmed her silent sobs and eventually lulled her to sleep.

A while later, she half woke to find a tall man with dark hair bent over her, his long nimble fingers brushing away a lock of hair from her face. Thinking it to be just a dream, she closed her eyes and fell back to sleep immediately. The next morning, she awoke fully clothed in her own bed with no memory as to how she had gotten there.  
  
                                                                                          ***

Darcy had just gotten home from another full day at S.H.I.E.L.D. and was desperate to get out of her dress pants and blazer, not to mention the underwire bra that was currently digging into her ribcage. She kicked off her high-heeled pumps at the door, and peeled off the blazer, tossing it over the arm of the armchair.  She started working off her nylons while on her way to her bedroom closet, trying not to trip herself up in the process. It wasn’t until she’s started peeling off her blouse that she realized that she had a captive audience. The Cat was sitting in the hallway outside her bedroom door, staring at her with an inscrutable expression on his face. Quite frankly, it was creeping her out. She finished pulling the blouse over her head and flung it at him, sending him hissing and spitting back down the hall. She then closed the door and finished undressing in peace.

                                                                                         ***

“What the hell are you doing in my apartment?!” The man digging in her cupboard regarded her coolly before going back to his search, displacing cans of soup and boxes of Rice-a-Roni in his quest for whatever it was he was looking for. He was unbelievably tall, towering over her by at least a foot, if not two. His black hair was swept back from his forehead, just barely brushing his shoulders, and it highlighted the ivory pallor of his skin. If she hadn’t been so surprised to find him in her kitchen, she would have thought him devastatingly handsome.

"Why, I live here,” he informed her in a clipped British accent, his tone suggesting she really ought to know better.

"Like hell, you do!” she retorted angrily. “And what are you doing digging through my cupboards?”

He regarded her with a Look that she knew she’d seen somewhere, but she couldn’t quite place it. “I am trying to find tuna,” he replied, as if it should be totally obvious.

“ _Tuna_?” She looked at him as if he just grew another head. _Oh jeez, he must be one of those crazies that somehow winds up in someone else’s home and thinks they belong there…_ she thought with a vague sense of dawning horror.

“Yes, tuna. I seem to have developed a taste for it in the past several months. I grew hungry, and since it seemed that you would not be returning anytime soon, I decided to take matters into my own hands. “ He looked at her balefully, slowly blinking his impossibly jade green eyes at her. _Wait a minute…_ She stared at him rather stupidly as her brain struggled to catch up to what her intuition was already screaming at her. And then the light-bulb went off. Her jaw dropped, and she knew her eyes must look like a cartoon.

“Wha- You’re the _Cat_?!” She narrowed her eyes at him.

He flashed a row of big white teeth in response, and part of her (the part that wasn’t completely hopping mad) knew she should probably be afraid. But then she remembered the undressing incident, her entire body went completely cold and then hot, and she clenched her fist with the sudden desire to hit him. Hard.

“You mean to tell me that you’ve been living in my home, **_watching_** _me_ , without me knowing it? What kind of sick person does that?!”

Something dangerous flashed in his eyes, and her heart skipped several beats in response. “Do not test my patience, mortal. It was a necessary arrangement. When I showed up on your doorstep several months ago, I was severely injured from falling to Earth from Asgard.” She gave a start at the mention of Asgard. “The only way for me to conserve enough energy for healing myself was to become a less complex life-form. As I did not relish trying to scratch out a living in the wild, I decided to find a home where I could, for a time, depend on someone else to provide for my most basic needs. That is all.”

“Who are you really, then?” She tilted her head inquisitively, looking him up and down. He was dressed somewhat similar to Thor. Or at least how Thor had been dressed after Mye-myeh flew back into his hand during the battle with the Destroyer. And his bearing hinted at someone powerful, regal even. No… it couldn’t be. He must have seen the understanding dawning in her eyes because he opened his mouth and then closed it again before finally replying.

“My name is Loki Laufeyson.”

Even though she half expected the answer, she still couldn’t keep the shock as well as a hint of fear from registering on her face for a split second. He saw it, of course, and his expression morphed from sardonic bitterness to mischievous glee within the space of a moment.

“Scared, little mortal?” He grinned, showing her those teeth again. But this time they goaded her into a sharp retort rather than fear.  
“Why? Should I be?” She regretted the words the minute she said them.

He began to stalk towards her, an intent expression on his face that made her instinctively back up until her back hit the wall and she could go no further. His lithe movements reminded her of the Cat when he was stalking a catnip mouse. Except now he was a very tall, very handsome man, and instead of a catnip mouse his prey was _her_. She fumbled her Taser out of her purse, but with one wave of his hand, some invisible force knocked it clattering to the floor. Almost of their own accord, her hands came up to rest on the chest piece of his armor, as he stopped directly in front of her, very much in her personal space. A wry smirk pulled at one corner of his lips as he braced one arm against the wall right next to her head. He brought his other hand up to her neck, his palm cupping the side of her neck and his thumb poised above her pulse, which was fluttering madly (although from actual fear or some strange form of attraction, she couldn’t tell). _What is he, some kind of vampire or something?_ a little voice in the back of her mind snarked.

Then, his smirk fading into something far more serious, he did something she definitely did not expect. His long fingers wrapped around the back of her neck, cradling the base of her skull, and he used his thumb to tip her chin upward as he bent down and kissed the breath out of her.


	6. Pranks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One prank sets off a string of mischief on both sides.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was written for the lovely [theindomitablemisslewis](http://theindomitablemisslewis.tumblr.com/) over on Tumblr for a drabble meme. Her prompt was _Humor Me- write a funny drabble about our characters"_
> 
> Edit: Because of a comment made recently, yes I did get the inspiration for the underwear prank from the Big Bang Theory episode. However the rest of the pranks are ones that I found on varying prank sites and then tailored to fit Loki and Darcy.

The prank war gets wildly out of hand. It all starts with him stringing every single one of her undergarments out on the telephone wire. It’s the prank that he’s been waiting to spring on her for weeks now, claiming her ‘mischief virginity’ as he puts it (to which she replies “My _WHAT_?!?!”). She just stands there for a full five minutes staring up at her brightly coloured bras and patterned panties as they swing in a slight breeze. She clenches her fist, then turns to the trickster currently doubled over with laughter next to her and socks him in the arm. He just continues laughing, not even fazed by the blow, and it’s then that she swears revenge.

Her retaliating prank is actually rather ingenious, although he won’t actually admit it to anyone. During his absences, Darcy gets the help of one of her engineering major friends to wire an alarm clock to a loudspeaker, and hides the entire set-up inside the couch where he sleeps. She then proceeds to set the alarm for 4am. The resulting sound-blast is enough to seriously rattle the windows and set dogs off barking blocks away. Jane is still awake working in the lab and is so focused she barely even registers the noise, which should probably be classified as a miracle, but then it is Jane. Erik is a heavy sleeper who could probably sleep through Ragnarøkkr itself, so he doesn’t even stir. Darcy has gotten herself some sound-cancelling headphones, so she also sleeps soundly through the whole thing. At breakfast, she sits giggling quietly into her cup of coffee while Loki glowers at her from across the table for the entire meal.

He responds in kind several weeks later. She realises later that she probably shouldn’t have allowed herself to be lulled into a false sense of security. But then he is incredibly good at the whole ‘disarmingly charming bastard deal’. She’s only been asleep for an hour when her alarm starts going off. She groggily reaches to turn it off, and sees that somehow it’s been set for midnight. She doesn’t really think anything of it. Until the second alarm starts going off a half hour later. And then a third a half hour after that. And she can’t find any of them. Somehow he’s placed them all around her room and then made them invisible, so she can’t find them to turn them off. And he’s stolen her sound-cancelling headphones too. Loki’s expression at breakfast can only be described as exultant. If she weren’t so exhausted, she’d probably hit him.

After a few days respite, Darcy retaliates. She begins singing The Bee Gees’ _Stayin’ Alive_ whenever he’s in earshot for a straight week, as loud as she possibly can and slightly off key. By the end of the week, he’s ready to strangle someone (preferably her). And then, in the middle of the day the following Wednesday, the recording starts up. Listening to Barry Gibbs’ falsetto on repeat for hours on end is even worse than listening to Darcy’s singing. After six hours, he finally finds the iPod and speaker dock locked inside one of the filing cabinets. His only consolation is that by this point Jane and Erik are as annoyed with her as he is.

The following week, he levitates her bed to the ceiling in the middle of the night and then secures it there using a host of fastening spells. When her alarm goes off in the morning, she reaches to hit the snooze button and her arm swipes nothing but air. She cracks open an eye and immediately sits up with a start, nearly banging her head on the ceiling. She peers over the edge of the bed to see the floor far below and lets out a bellow. “LOOOOOKIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!” Said prankster is already awake as he lays on the couch with his hands tucked behind his head and his feet crossed at the ankles, and he grins widely at the sound of her shout.

After several petty pranks including switching shampoo with hair removal cream (Loki was NOT happy), saran-wrapping the toilet, and short-sheeting the bed (…er, couch), the others have decided that enough is enough. Two and a half months after Darcy finds her underwear on the telephone line, Loki gets a visit from his mother. He highly suspects Thor is to blame, but he keeps this to himself. He offers Darcy a grudging apology under the watchful eye of Queen Frigga, and in the spirit of fairness she apologises as well. They reach an uneasy truce for the time being. If Darcy notices that occasionally her left socks go missing or Loki notices that his Nutella stash sometimes winds up someplace other than where he left it last, neither of them says anything.


End file.
